Ron Galella obituary
01.06.2022 - 19:55
/ msn.com
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. In 1969 Galella jumped out from behind a bush to grab a snap of Jackie and her eight-year-old son, John F Kennedy Jr, on bicycles entering Central Park, New York. Reacting to the boy’s frightened response, Secret Service agents handcuffed Galella as Jackie yelled “smash his camera”.
He sued her, and when her husband Aristotle Onassis offered to settle, asked for a million dollars. Instead of paying, the Onassises countersued. Jackie testified that Galella made her life “intolerable, almost unlivable,” and that she had “no peace, no peace of mind”.
In 1972 a judge issued a restraining order, keeping Galella 150 feet away (the distance was reduced to 25ft on appeal). He collected his photos in a bestselling book, Jacqueline (1974), but the battle continued; Galella even dated the family’s maid to gather information on Jackie’s movements. In his most famous photo, titled Windblown Jackie, he surprised her from a taxi window.
Her expression, part-hidden by her hair, is one of almost bemused capitulation. Onassis compared him to a sniper aiming at JFK. Galella once explained: “I had no girlfriend; she was my girlfriend in a way.
”The game ended in 1982 when, after Galella’s 12th violation of the restraining order, a judge threatened to jail him, and he agreed to take no more pictures of her. By then, however, his reputation, burnished by confrontation, was secure. In 1971 he cut through the shrubbery surrounding Doris Day’s estate to get a poolside picture of her in a bikini.